Village Community in Ancient and Medieval India

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Village Community in Ancient and Medieval India!

Village Community in Ancient India

According to Apastamba Dharma Sutra, state officials (Adhyaksas or Adhipals) were to be appointed by the kings for towns and villages with well-defined jurisdictions. In Visnu Smrti, it is written that a chain of officials is to be placed by the king in charge of 1, 10, and 100 villages as well as of the whole rural area. According to Kautilya, three tiers of officials were to be in charge of the rural as well as the urban areas. The Samaharta or the Pradesta was in charge of the janpada or the rural area. Each of its four divisions was entrusted to a Sthanika, and units of five or ten villages were in charge of Gopas.

The officers were primarily concerned with the protection of the lives and property of the subjects. The officer of lower rank was required to report to his superior officer if he failed in the tasks assigned to him. Kautilya reports that the officers were individually responsible for protecting people’s lives, maintaining records of revenues, dues and remissions, and deciding civil and criminal suits at the headquarters of ten, four hundred, and eight hundred villages.

According to the Dharma Sutras, the headman is appointed by the king. According to Kautilya’s Arthasastra, the office of headman was hereditary, subject to confirmation by the king. Jatak story mentions village assemblies for managing village affairs. Under the rule of the Pandyas and the Cholas, well-organised assembles, with wide powers of self-government, functioned with an executive body or various executive committees.

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Executive committees were elected by the members according to rules framed by themselves. The assemblies enjoyed a high reputation for integrity and honesty. They enjoyed the king’s patronage and managed temple funds. The assemblies decided disputes, granted lands, founded and maintained hospitals, took charge of charitable endowments and controlled taxes.

At the time of the Buddha (in the sixth century B.C.), the village was an autonomous unit of corporate life ministering to its own needs of taxation, education, settlement of disputes and public works. One finds a lot of change in village life during this period.

In Pali texts the Gamabhojaka (person who received village revenues by royal charter) appears as a tyrant who fleeced people with arbitrary exactions and sometimes interfered with the autonomous and associate life of the village. People during this period amused themselves at fairs and carnivals where animal fights, acrobatic and magical feats, dances and dramatic performances were held for entertainment. Prostitution, drinking and gambling were common vices.

The accounts given by Megasthenes report the existence of seven castes, namely, Brahmanas or philosophers, cultivators of land, herdsmen and hunters, artisans and traders, soldiers, spies and councilors (officers of the king).

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These were in fact vocational groups rather than castes based on heredity. Inter-caste marriages were quite common. It seems that this was the period when socio-cultural distinctions arose. However, distinctions in terms of the ruler and the ruled existed earlier in the Indian village. Inter-village ties always existed. The villages had connections with the king and townsmen. Both were governed by the king and the officers appointed by him.

Village Community in Medieval India:

The village scene underwent a sea-change in the medieval period. The temple and the village council (panchayat) emerged as the most effective institutions. Medieval Hindu rulers neglected their obligations to their subjects.

The people were left with no choice except to search for their own means of improving their lot. The temple and the panchayat emerged as the means to a happy, healthy and productive life. The panchayat protected people from exploi­tation by the government.

The temples maintained a good number of employees, patronised scholars, and served as seminaries of higher knowledge and the fine arts. They also served as bankers and farmers, daily feeding thousands of people, besides carrying on a variety of religious, educational and cultural activities.

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Many mosques also served as seminaries and they had government patronage. Temples and panchayats no doubt filled up the socio-cultural vacuum created by the rulers, but they also created a static culture in India. The economy became stagnant. No new changes, innovations and devices for advancement of society were introduced.

In the early medieval period, the majority of people lived in villages with agriculture as their principal occupation. The agricul­turists were required to pay land revenue to the state through different types of intermediaries.

The land-man ratio was low, food was plentiful and cheap. Life in the villages was isolated and unprogressive, and extremely simple and unchanging. The village economy was largely self-sufficient. The village artisans and servants, the priest and the moneylender satisfied all his (the villager’s) requirements. The joint family system afforded him protection; the village panchayat gave his minor grievances a just redress.

The village with its caste panchayats and headman was an autonomous unit of the state which carried out its activities unmindful of what happened to the central government. Thus, medieval India had a different village scene from that of ancient India.

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The stagnant village economy during the medieval period created several misconceptions about Indian village among the British administrators and ethnographers. In the following paragraphs we will give a brief account of some of these distorted views.